There are many ways to look at the energy problems facing the Golden Valley Electric Association, an urgent matter because of the disappearance of relatively cheap gas-fired power from Southcentral via the Intertie. This column by Gwen Holdman, reprinted from the Alaska Beacon, features her take on how and why GVEA is in this situation. We haven’t seen the leadership we need from the state to help find solutions. Telling everyone that the gas line is coming is not the answer.
Read MoreHouse Republicans marked the end of their latest recess by praising themselves for passing the One Big Beautiful Bill act last summer.
But they refused to call the One Big Beautiful Bill act by the name they gave it a year ago, when they thought the beautiful bill name was a brilliant public relations gimmick.
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Begich the Third, who is running for reelection, has failed to tell Alaskans why joining an anti-Islam collection of Congressmen has become a priority for him. He doesn’t list his membership in the “Sharia-Free America Caucus” on his website, but the group identifies him as a full-fledged member.
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Sen. Dan Sullivan was appalled at how much it had cost him to fill up his pickup truck with gas in Anchorage, blaming the president of the United States for skyrocketing fuel prices that were crushing people across the country.
“Had it been fully empty it would have been $142 to fill up the tank of one truck. In America. Devastating to working families, but nobody’s being fooled. Nobody’s being fooled,” said Sullivan, appearing with other Republicans who were equally outraged at the price of gasoline.
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Bernadette Wilson’s claim that she will get the Legislature to approve a $1.5 billion deficit to pay $2.4 billion in dividends by vetoing “everything out of that damn budget until they figure out how they’re going to pay out your Permanent Fund Dividend,” shows that she doesn’t know the first thing about the Legislature, the budget or the demand for state services in Alaska.
Her stock answer on the PFD is to throw out extraneous questions combined with pure gibberish, never pausing, never stopping, never getting to the point and always dancing around the topic.
Read MoreThe House voted Friday to propose spending about $1 billion on the Permanent Fund Dividend this year, rejecting a Republican plan to spend $2.4 billion, which would have created a $1.4 billion deficit.
The plan proposes a $1,500 Permanent Fund dividend, but it will likely to trimmed to $1,000 or $1,100 in the Senate.
Read More“This latest shock to the global LNG supply could permanently change global consumption to other energy sources to avoid future shocks. In particular, should regional public policies shift away from natural gas and toward coal or renewables, Asia LNG demand growth may not resurge even under sequentially lower natural gas prices. Such a scenario might require LNG supply curtailment and temporarily shut the U.S. LNG export arbitrage.”
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Alaska’s Republican leaders, with the usual single exception, still have nothing to say about their supreme leader threatening war crimes. Sullivan and Begich cheered Trump’s disastrous decision to go to war.
Their cowardly silence, as Trump bleats that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” is criminal. With Sulllivan and Begich mute and afraid, Sen. Lisa Murkowski is calling out Trump for putting American lives at risk.
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Former Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson, one of the legions of Republican candidates for governor, says he wants to more than double the earnings of the Alaska Permanent Fund to pay higher dividends, avoid new taxes and solve the state’s financial woes.
Bronson and his running mate, Fairbanksan Josh Church, are newcomers to state politics, but that doesn’t excuse their cavalier manner. They seem to be unaware that injecting politics into Permanent Fund investments is a terrible idea.
Read MoreSen. Dan Sullivan and Rep. Nick Begich the Third will not condemn Donald Trump’s plan for massive war crimes.
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